by Paul Temple
The recent HEPI report (number 185), ‘There was nothing to do but take action’: The encampments protesting for Palestine and the response to them, by Josh Freeman, provides a thoughtful, detailed account of the pro-Palestinian student protests that took place during summer 2024 on many British university campuses. “Peak camp” occurred in May 2024, when Freeman’s research shows that activity was taking place at 36 institutions, tailing-off to almost zero by mid-August – although when I last looked, a SOAS student presence remained tucked-up against the wall of the University Church on Byng Place, braving Bloomsbury winter weather, and would perhaps meet Freeman’s definition of an encampment as consisting of “some form of (temporary) structure”.
Freeman’s report focuses mainly on student motivations and on the interactions between students and the administrations of their universities, and is well worth studying to consider how any future student actions might best be handled. There is, though, a particular point for those interested in the structures of UK higher education that emerges clearly from the list Freeman provides of the institutions whose students set up pro-Palestinian encampments during 2024. Of the 36 universities involved, 21 of them were Russell Group institutions (out of a Russell Group membership of 24 – the missing ones were Glasgow, Queen’s University Belfast, and Southampton). Of the remaining 15 universities which had encampments, all except four were pre-1992 institutions (the four being University of the Arts London, Falmouth, Lincoln, and Portsmouth).
What explains the concentration of encampments at “old” universities, with a particular focus on the high-tariff Russell Group ones? Only Portsmouth represents the universities that emerged from the polytechnics. Freeman (in a recent exchange) suggests that having a politically-engaged student community was the key factor – but that of courses raises the question of why that should be found in older-established universities: institutional age itself can hardly be crucial, when many post-’92 universities can trace the histories of predecessor institutions over the last century or more. Freeman also wonders about support from the local community: he suggests that this may have been a factor in the concentration of activity in London – although it was apparently absent at Glasgow University, despite the city having Scotland’s largest concentration of Muslims.
Does a class-based analysis help here? Are students at Russell Group (or Russell-ish) universities, coming predominantly from relatively better-off families, more likely to be politically engaged than those at less-prestigious institutions, even in the same city? And not only more engaged, say in the sense of supporting a political party, but being prepared to take direct action in support of a cause? And even further, when it comes to action, having an expectation that “they” will listen and do something as a result: Freeman lists the motions passed by student bodies calling for university boycotts of Israel and disinvestment as well as wider calls for a Gaza ceasefire and “solidarity” with Palestine. Student politicians have long been attracted to wide-ranging demands for global change, of course, and the Palestinian cause is simply the most recent crisis on which to focus, but the current institutional basis of student activism is striking.
Whatever the explanation, Freeman’s work has shown up, in I think an unexpected way, the rather sharp divisions that seem to exist across UK higher education, ones not always apparent to the casual observer.
(This blog reflects discussion with Michael Shattock and Josh Freeman; I’m grateful for their thoughts.)
PS The Russell Hotel no longer exists – it is now called the Fitzroy, disappointingly not commemorating the Captain of the Beagle and the inventor of the weather forecast, but its architect.
Dr Paul Temple is Honorary Associate Professor in the Centre for Higher Education Studies, UCL Institute of Education.